It relieved her to see how comfortable they were with Devin, with all the MacKades, really. There had been a time when Emma hesitated to so much as speak to a man, and Connor, sweet, sensitive Connor had forever been braced for a verbal blow.
No more.
Just that day, both of them had talked to Devin as if it were as natural as breathing. She wished she was as resilient. It was the badge, she decided. She was finding it easier and easier to be comfortable with Jared or Rafe or Shane. She didn't jolt when one of them touched her or flashed that MacKade grin.
It was different with Devin. But then, she'd had to go to him, had to confess that she'd allowed herself to be beaten and abused for years, had been forced to show him the marks on her body. Nothing, not even Joe's vicious fists, had ever humiliated her more than that.
She knew he was sorry for her, and felt obligated to look out for her and the children. He took his responsibilities as sheriff seriously. No one, including herself, would have believed twelve or fifteen years before, when he and his brothers were simply those bad MacKade boys, that they would turn out the way they had.
Devin had made himself into an admirable man. Still rough, she supposed. She knew he could break up a bar fight with little more than a snarl, and that he used his fists when that didn't work.
Still, she'd never known anyone gentler or more compassionate. He'd been very good to her and her children, and she owed him.
Laying her cheek against the window, she closed her eyes. She was going to train herself not to be so jumpy around him. She could do it. She had been working very hard over the past year or so to teach herself composure and calm, to pretend she wasn't shy when she greeted the guests. It worked so well that she often didn't even feel shy anymore.
There were even times, and they were coming more and more often, when she actually felt competent.
So she would work now to teach herself not to be so jittery around Devin. She would stop thinking about his badge and remember that he was one of her oldest friends—one she'd even had a little crush on, once upon a time. She would stop thinking of how big his hands were, or what would happen if he got angry and used them against her.
Instead she would remember how gently they ruffled her daughter's hair, or how firmly they covered her son's when he helped him with his batting stance.
Or how nice it had been, how unexpectedly nice, to feel the way his finger brushed her cheek.
She curled more comfortably on the padded seat....
He was here, right here beside her, smiling in that way that brought his dimple out and made odd things happen to her insides. He touched her, and she didn't jolt this time. There, she thought, it was working already.
He was touching her, drawing her against him. Oh, his body was hard. But she didn't flinch. She was trembling, though. Couldn't stop. He was so big, so strong, he could break her in half. And yet... and yet his hands stroked so lightly over her. Over her skin. But he couldn't be touching her there.
His mouth was on hers, so warm and gentle. She couldn't stop him. She forgot that she should, even when his tongue slid over hers and his hand cupped her breast as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He was touching her, and it was hard to breathe, because those big hands were gliding over her. And now his mouth. Oh, it was wrong, it had to be wrong, but it was so wonderful to feel that warm, wet mouth on her.
She was whimpering, moaning, opening for him. She felt him coming inside her, so hard, so smooth, so right.
The explosion of a gunshot had her jerking upright. She was gasping for breath, damp with sweat, her mind a muddled mess.
Alone in the parlor. Of course she was alone. But her skin was tingling, and there was a tingling, almost a burning inside her, that she hadn't felt in so many years she'd forgotten it was possible.
Shame washed over her, had her gathering her robe tight at her throat. It was terrible, she thought, just terrible, to have been imagining herself with Devin like that. After he'd been so kind to her.
She didn't know what had gotten into her. She didn't even like sex. It was something she'd learned to dread, and then to tolerate, very soon after her miserable wedding-night initiation. Pleasure had never entered into it. She simply wasn't built for that kind of pleasure, and had accepted the lack early on.
But when she got to her feet, her legs were shaky and there was a nagging pressure low in her stomach. She drew in a breath, and along with it the delicate scent of roses.
So she wasn't alone, Cassie thought. Abigail was with her. Comforted, she went back upstairs to check on her children one last time before going to bed.
Devin was well into what he considered the paper-pushing part of the day by noon. He had a report to type and file on the break-in at Duff's Tavern. The trio of teenagers who'd thought to relieve Duff of a bit of his inventory had been pathetically easy to track down.
Then there was the traffic accident out on Brook Lane. Hardly more than a fender bender, Devin mused as he hammered at the keys, but Lester Swoop, whose new sedan had been crinkled, was raising a ruckus.
He had to finish up his report to the mayor and town council on the preparations for crowd control on parade day.
Then, maybe, he'd get some lunch.
Across the office, his young deputy, Donnie Banks, was dealing with parking tickets. And, as usual, drumming his fingers on the metal desk to some inner rhythm that Devin tried hard to ignore.
The day was warm enough that the windows were open. The budget didn't run to air-conditioning. He could hear the sounds of traffic—what there was of it—and the occasionally squeal of brakes as someone came up too fast on the stop light at Main and Antie-tam.
He still had the mail to sort through, his job, since Crystal Abbott was off on maternity leave and he hadn't come up with a temporary replacement for her position as general dogsbody.
He didn't mind really. The sheer monotony of paperwork could be soothing. Things were quiet, as they were expected to be in a town of less than twenty-five hundred. His job was to keep it that way, and deal with the drunk-and-disorderlies, the traffic violations, the occasional petty theft or domestic dispute.
Things heated up now and again, but in his seven years with Antietam's sheriff's department, both as deputy and as sheriff, he'd had to draw his weapon only twice. And he'd never been forced to fire it.
Reason and guile usually worked, and if they didn't, a fist usually turned the tide.
When the phone rang, Devin glanced hopefully toward his deputy. Donnie's fingers never broke rhythm, so, with a sigh, Devin answered the phone himself. He was well on his way to calming a hysterical woman who claimed that her neighbor deliberately sent her dog over into her yard to fertilize her petunias when Jared walked in.
"Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am." Devin rolled his eyes and motioned Jared to a seat. "Have you talked with her, asked her to keep her dog in her own yard?"
The answer came so fast and loud that Devin winced and held the phone six inches from his ear. In the little wooden chair across the desk, Jared grinned and stretched out his legs.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm sure you worked very hard on your petunias. No, no, don't do that. Please. There's a law against discharging a firearm within town limits. You don't want to go waving your shotgun at the dog. I'm going to send somebody over there. Yes, ma'am, I surely am. Ah... we'll see what we can do. You leave that shotgun alone now, you hear? Yes, ma'am, I've got it all down right here. You just sit tight."
He hung up, tore off the memo sheet. "Donnie?"
"Yo."
"Get on over to Oak Leaf and handle this."
"We got us a situation?" Donnie stopped his drumming, looking hopeful. Devin thought he seemed very young, in his carefully pressed uniform, with his scarecrow hair and eager blue eyes.